The Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital project, in inner city Brisbane, has taken landscape architecture beyond the conventional two-dimensional realm and showed that design innovation can lead to tangible benefits to health and wellbeing. The rooftop subtropical landscapes, community spaces and vertical gardens are clear evidence of effective design collaboration between project partners on what was a complex and challenging site.

The design capitalizes on and creates clever relationships within its urban location, and provides for public amenity at a variety of scales. The new civic space on Vulture Street is a significant addition to the public environment of South Bank and demonstrates the importance of engaging with the existing urban context irrespective of the building project’s scale.

The micro landscapes in and around the hospital provide an accessible form of relief and escape for seriously ill and infirm patients and have demonstrative benefits in sustainability and building efficiency. The landscape designs are bold, progressive and conversant with the language of Lyons’ building facades. The series of garden rooms offer parents and children places that inspire curiosity and play as well as a reprieve from hospital visits. Green walls and green roofs become wonderlands as well as lush, verdant vistas from hospital beds.

The project makes a major contribution to the advancement of green infrastructure landscape design practice at a national level.

AILA National Award for Civic Landscape

One Central Park

ASPECT Studios and OCULUS

Photo: Simon Wood

One Central Parkis a standout project by virtue of its application of technical advancements. These include soil and planting research, testing and development for the seven kilometres of balcony planting and green facade that cover the buildings in a challenging urban environment, and the recycled backwater irrigation system developed for the project, the first of its kind in Australia. The courtyards are inviting spaces for residents and visitors alike to enjoy and socialise.

The project makes a substantial contribution to the promotion of landscape architecture and the advancement of culture through design advocacy. Demonstrating a highly integrated community and sustainable design outcome of outstanding quality, the client is commended for taking on the risks associated with this non-standard project solution, one that has delivered exceptional rewards for the locale and its residents.

AILA National Award for Civic Landscape

UTS Alumni Green

ASPECT Studios

Photo: Simon Wood

The UTS Alumni Green is a well-executed public space project that has enlivened the heart of the University of Technology, Sydney City Campus.

Prior to the design competition and construction of Alumni Green, the campus was characterised by a disparate collection of buildings with extremely limited opportunities for students to gather and enjoy. The project has put people first, providing a welcoming environment for the campus community to work, relax and socialise.

The design has created spaces with controlled materiality and an excellent balance between hard and soft surfaces. Special attention has been paid to circulation and the new experience. The space flows into its surrounding buildings and streets making it highly accessible. Lifting the ground plane allowed adequate soil depth for growing trees on slab and lush ground covers with careful attention paid to collection of stormwater for irrigation. This has given the space a soft texture with the masterstroke of the central lawn adding calm and relaxation to a busy campus.

AILA National Award for Civic Landscape

Rundle Mall

HASSELL

Photo: Peter Bennetts

The revitalised Rundle Mall in the Adelaide CBD is the people’s place. The design creates a destination beyond the merely transactional and encourages communal gathering and social engagement. Its adaptable, flexible spaces and openness create opportunities for people to engage in a variety of experiences. The bespoke furnishings and structures are delightful in their arrangement, amorphous in their form but subtly shift the regimented geometry of the original street walls.

The successful collaboration with Adelaide City Council and the retail traders is evident in the quality of this project, which is a vitally important reimagining of the city’s retail precinct and a major contribution to its public space network. The project has already delivered a significant economic dividend in stimulating property reinvestment.

AILA National Award for Civic Landscape

Glenorchy Art and Sculpture Park (GASP!) Stage 2

McGregor Coxall

GASP stage 2 is a highly site-responsive design solution. The location’s breath-taking landscape provides a stunning backdrop to a new cultural asset that provides a stage for people to engage with Wilkinson’s Point through art and experience of place. Applying a ‘build it and they will come’ philosophy, the project is a well-used civic and cultural space.

The project is tactical and precise; its sweeping arc boardwalk and entrance provides a sequence of spatial experiences that are deeply embedded in the site. Exposure to the weather and water balanced by cloistered courtyards; concrete expanses and found objects juxtaposed with temporary artworks and refined seating arrangements. Importantly, this once vacant and disused site, is reconnected to the now well established cultural and natural precincts that recently re-invented Tasmania’s civic identity.

It has captured the imagination of locals and visitors as well as being recognised nationally and abroad. It has acted as a stimulant to renewed interest and investment in the local economy. The project is already delivering social, economic and environmental dividends and is to be commended for achieving this outcome with a fairly modest public investment.

AILA National Award for Civic Landscape

The Goods Line

ASPECT Studios

Photo: Florian Groehn

The Goods Line is an exemplary addition to the social infrastructure of inner-Sydney through the clever adaptive use of a defunct rail line. It is an outstanding demonstration of landscape’s role in improving urban connectivity.

The repurposed rail line completes a missing link in the green infrastructure connecting Central Park, Darling Harbour and Circular Quay, while also providing an enjoyable destination in its own right with shaded performance spaces, play areas and places for both reflection and connection.

The hard and soft landscape detailing is extremely well done. Post-industrial chic intertwines with sinuous, sleek concrete; the railway is remembered but not memorialised.

The project creates a vibrant urban park that has broad demographic appeal and as a result, strengthens the public life of the area. The design cleverly interprets the rich industrial history of the structure while also creating an exciting new identity that is already stimulating the possibilities of adjacent spaces.

AILA National Award for Civic Landscape

Fiona Stanley Hospital

HASSELL

Photo: Peter Bennetts

Fiona Stanley Hospital is a world-class example of the integration of landscape spaces across a large public health facility. Within a diverse multi-disciplinary team, the landscape architects ensured that a holistic view of the entire precinct was maintained. The integration of environmentally sustainable design solutions, including the salvaging and replanting of existing vegetation and WSUD techniques, mark this as a highly successful project. The roof top gardens are a distinctive and popular feature of the facility, while the natural environment of this project is already promoting healing benefits for the hospital’s patients and workers.

Parks and Open Space

AILA National Parks and Open Space Award of Excellence

MacKenzie Falls Gorge Trail

Hansen Partnership

Photo: Andrew Lloyd

When you're in the great outdoors, it's easy to succumb to the beauty and scale of the landscape around you. But every now and then, you need some guidance – a light touch on the shoulder to point out something spectacular, or a gentle deviation in a trail to focus your attention on something that could have easily passed you by.

The Mackenzie Falls Trail achieves this experiential quality in a way that is so subtle, it’s likely most people won’t realise they’ve been led astray. The standout quality is the focus on preserving the landscape qualities of the site the trail traverses; using materials that reflect its natural setting, and quietly emphasising the craggy features of wilderness it passes through. What could have easily been a ‘free-for-all’ across a stream has become a chance to take in a snapshot of something spectacular – a coming together of wild nature and designed infrastructure, in a way that is harmonious to both. This is a project that all landscape architects will aspire to visit.

AILA National Award for Parks and Open Space

Barangaroo Reserve

Johnson Pilton Walker in association with PWP Landscape Architecture

Photo: Copetercam

Barangaroo Reserve is a project with vision. It reconnects Sydney's waterfront by re-establishing its historical shoreline and restoring one of Sydney five inner harbour headlands. The result crosses the boundaries between the old, the very old and the new in order to create an iconic open space for the future. Executed with fine detail, the project will become recognisable worldwide, thereby enhancing Sydney’s identity. But the project goes deeper than this, reflecting its historical and cultural heritage, opening up an important part of the city's foreshore for everyone to use, and providing new habitat for threatened and declining indigenous species.

AILA National Award for Parks and Open Space

McCulloch Avenue Boardwalk

Site Office

Photo: Lisbeth Grosmann

Sometimes the best landscape architecture comes from apparent simplicity: let the natural environment do the shaping, disregard the urge to make a bold statement, leave a light footprint. The McCullough Avenue Boardwalk achieves this with elegance. Created on a modest budget, the design accentuates the delicate topography of the site, while also containing the effects of heavy foot traffic. It cuts a path, but allows the landscape to dominate; the materials contributing to a sense of place and discovery. What could have been a simple boardwalk through a dune has become an experiential journey that rewards the user with a sense of pride and enjoyment. No longer will be the destination be the focus.

AILA National Award for Parks and Open Space

Braithwaite Park Nature Play

Emerge Associates

If you ask most people to draw a playground, they'll with a square box, add some swings and throw in a slide or two. But every now a project that throws the concept of playgrounds in the air and rethinks play from the ground up. Braithwaite Park is such a space. Working with the natural elements of the site, there are no defined borders, and no standard combinations Natural materials have been repurposed in a way that only the young-at-heart understand, the plan allows for individuals to determine how best to use the space. The result is an absorbing, natural space where you can have the best of fun.

AILA National Award for Parks and Open Space

Return to Royal Park

City of Melbourne – City Design Studio

Photo: Peter Bennetts

Royal Park in the City of Melbourne has been undergoing transformation as part of its overall masterplan, but it needed a gateway and a new engaging playground.

This project, heavily influenced by the landscape architecture team, has delivered a space for children of all ages, which provides for developmental needs and encourages people to come together. Return to Royal Park provides a welcome interaction with the natural landscape of the park, which begs you to get wet and dirty. Planting reflects traditional Aboriginal interpretations of the seasons, yet is set out in a way that tips a hat to the formality of the wider Park. The result is an immersive gateway that encourages hospital visitors to get outside.

AILA National Award for Parks and Open Space

Adelaide Botanic Garden – First Creek Wetland

Taylor Cullity Lethlean

Photo: John Gollings

In years gone by, wetlands were the swampy wastelands of our society. Now, more and more, we’re learning about their importance in the eco-cycle of water and in keeping the world living. And it is projects like the First Creek Wetland in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens that are helping to change our perception.

This garden within a garden uses innovative ways to encourage people to interact with nature, to learn about plant ecology, and to understand the role of water flow in creating life. The use of sculpture brings an elegance to the wetland function, encouraging user interaction and enhancing the experience of learning. Adaptable spaces provide opportunities for groups, while the material palette brings the design together as a cohesive unit.

Infrastructure

AILA National Infrastructure Award of Excellence

Bowen Place Crossing

Spackman Mossop Michaels

Photo: Brett Boardman

The exemplary design and delivery of Bowen Place Crossing demonstrates the benefits well designed, integrated and contextual infrastructure, designed from a landscape approach can provide cities. Located within the national capital, and within the Parliamentary Zone, the project not only improves access and connects people with Lake Burley Griffin, it also reinforces the civic nature of Canberra’s Burley Griffin Plan.

The sculptural qualities of the project reinforce the designers’ vision of building more than a physical link across Kings Avenue. The project responds to existing geometries and creates new views to the Carillion. The scale, fluidity, material selection and landscape of Bowen Place Crossing references land art movement as well as Canberra’s modernist landscape architecture and architecture, including the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Australia.

The simplicity of the design belies the complexity of successfully meeting the challenges of transforming the functional into the splendid, including the significant excavations required. Bowen Place Crossing sets an exemplary standard in the design of infrastructure in Australia.

AILA National Award for Infrastructure

Sydney Park Water Re-Use Project Stage 2

Turf Design Studio and Environmental Partnership

Photo: Simon Wood

Integrating ecology, play, stakeholder management, engineering and sustainable water management requirements within an existing and well-loved inner city park is a difficult brief in any context. The collaborative approach taken to tackling these issues at Sydney Park has successfully addressed them all and led to a highly resolved, considered and thoughtful design.

The project beautifully expresses the forms, shapes, context, ecology and management of water, while also focussing on people, place, habitat and ecology. Diverse users coexist easily within the park, which raises awareness of the value of well-managed, designed, functional and valuable inner city green space.

This latest stage in a significant urban renewal project is well conceived and executed. The result is a nationally significant green infrastructure project that responds to the needs of the local community and delivers an educational, scientifically rigorous and enjoyable place.

AILA National Award for Infrastructure

John Whitton Bridge Open Space

OCULUS

Photo: Simon Patching

The space beneath our cities’ infrastructure is often left over and misused, sometimes dangerous, but mostly forgotten. This smaller project under existing pedestrian and rail bridges on the shores of the Parramatta River gives meaning and function to such spaces, rediscovering value for local communities and other users.

The project reconnects communities and spaces previously separated by road and rail. Now people stroll, cycle or run around the peninsula – the work is both a new destination and a link. The design fuses the infrastructure context with the natural opportunities of the foreshore park. Lighting, landscape elements and detailing encourage mixed uses over both day and night and contribute to improved quality of experience and definition of the space.

The John Whitton Bridge Open Space demonstrates how landscape architecture can contribute to the creation of a complex multi-use public domain that provides function, connectivity, amenity and social engagement. It shows how reprogramming everyday uses, along with careful design and implementation, can encourage social engagement and provide safe access. This approach is relevant to other ubiquitous urban spaces – boat ramps, paths, foreshore car parking and other leftover waterfront spaces – and serves as an exemplar for future work.

AILA National Award for Infrastructure

Victorian Desalination Plant and Ecological Reserve

ASPECT Studios

Photo: John Gollings

Victoria’s Desalination Plant is a project of formidable scale. Part water treatment infrastructure, part environmental restoration, it is in many ways a very large piece of worthy and valuable green infrastructure.

The ultimate in land shaping, the design reflects the local coastal dune topography as it re-sculpts the landscape to hide the massive desalination plant. The designers have deftly managed to shield and focus views, folding the infrastructure into the landscape and wrapping it in a fresh skin of nature. They exhibit impressive skill in shaping the experience from both land and air.

Within a very large project structure, the landscape architects have created a new standard and proved that effective collaboration, design and execution delivers better environmental outcomes.

Cultural Heritage

AILA National Cultural Heritage Award of Excellence

Port Adelaide Renewal: Hart's Mill Surrounds

ASPECT Studios

Photo: Don Brice

Port Adelaide is one of Australia’s most valuable and least realised post-industrial waterfronts. Over the past decade it has been the subject of a slow burn renewal through many state government and local council initiatives designed to reenergise ‘The Port’.

Within this context, Hart’s Mills Surrounds has almost single-handedly reshaped how South Australians view ‘The Port’ by adaptively reshaping the precinct and opening it up for public uses.The former mill, a heritage-listed waterfront building, provides the backdrop for a contemporary new play space, while the sensitively and adaptively reused flour shed is now fit for community uses. This has also enabled the completion of a hike-and-bike loop, and created a new destination as well as interpretation opportunities for the former industrial uses on the Port River. The colourful contrast of the play space against the red brick mill and the expansive wharf areas create a new experience as well as much needed attention on the Port community.

AILA National Award for Cultural Heritage

Completion of the Courtyards at the Shrine of Remembrance

rush wright associates

Photo: Chris Erskine

The Shrine of Remembrance looms large in Melbourne’s landscape, creating one of Australia’s most poignant sites of cultural memory. Completing the major recent development of the Shrine, the new stage 2 courtyard gardens provide a fine addition to this much-visited and well-loved site. These courtyards are critical to the overall redevelopment plan and also add depth and expression as bespoke spaces with their own character. The Jury was pleased to see the conceptual integrity of the individual projects remains intact over the long timespan of the redevelopment, which is a testament to the vision and the continuation of the design process by the client, the Shrine Trustees.

Land Conservation

AILA National Land Conservation Award of Excellence

Gum Scrub Creek, Officer

Outlines Landscape Architecture

Photo: Nick Stephenson

Creating a 10-hectare wetland in an urban growth area degraded by agriculture takes vision and quality of execution. Gum Scrub Creek is such a project. Located in Officer, Melbourne, the project has taken five years of planning to deliver, and sets a benchmark for quality urban development.

Exploring the project even at the basic level reveals innovations in engineering interventions, including bio-filtration systems and habitat ponds. But the results go deeper, the completed project reveals crafted natural patterns, architectural interventions and, most crucially, community pride. Combining natural restoration with creative stormwater management, the project provides a habitat for threatened species and promotes the restoration of diminishing ecosystems.

Once a farmers’ drain, Gum Scrub Creek has become a centre for community engagement and a developing natural environment to be cherished by generations to come.

AILA National Award for Land Conservation

Shipwreck Coast Master Plan
McGregor Coxall

Shipwreck Coast in South Victoria is recognised worldwide and attracts thousands of visitors annually. Yet these tourists unwittingly threaten the very existence of the landscape they are coming to see, and in turn pose a threat to the communities that survive on their presence.

In this master plan, the landscape architects have worked collaboratively to explore strategies to manage and promote eco-tourism along this iconic coastline, in a way that protects its fragile state. The result is an integrated and cohesive plan that tackles issues holistically, exploring sustainable management practices that balance the desire for perpetual visitation with conservation and habitat preservation. It also provides a framework for investment as funding allows, while providing tools for calculating net present values that demonstrate economic viability.

AILA National Award for Land ConservationWest Belconnen Landscape and Open Space Strategy

McGregor Coxall

The West Belconnen Open Space Strategy project firmly shakes off the belief that greenfield development is bad for the environment. With conservation at its core, the project paves a way for a new community of 30,000 people to share their environment with threatened species while also providing opportunities for more traditional recreational activity. Incorporating historical landfill sites, the plans show protection of specialised natural habitats, enhancement of ecological features, and opportunities for large-scale revegetation. This is balanced with the provision of space for renewable energy projects, community facilities and urban agriculture. The strategy is focussed on positioning West Belconnen as a world leading, green community.

Tourism

AILA National Tourism Award of Excellence

Penguin Plus Viewing Area

Tract Consultants with Wood Marsh Architecture

Penguin Plusis a highly site-sensitive design on Phillip Island, which enables the visitor experience to be dominated by the quality of the environment and the appeal of the fauna. The contoured structure, with curved boardwalk and stepped viewing area, sits sympathetically in the coastal landscape, providing a wide range of visitor viewing options while the improved lighting system greatly reduces the impact on the penguin habitat.

This project has clearly been informed by the comprehensive Master Plan for Phillip Island Nature Parks as well as a Design Guideline manual.

The work is beautifully detailed and provides a replicable prototype for the development of other components of this fragile landscape into the future. The project successfully demonstrates how a well-structured and values-driven design process can transform organisational thinking and practice for public agencies.

AILA National Award for Tourism

Jetty to Jetty Trail

UDLA

Set in the country of the Yawuru people of Broome, the Jetty to Jetty Trail shows great leadership and ingenuity in developing a simple yet skillful economic development initiative that integrates cultural heritage, planning and tourism.

Traditional trail elements guide visitors through thirteen sites in a relaxed and exploratory manner, which is true to Broome’s character. The accompanying smartphone app and book add a further dimension of learning, thereby extending the project’s reach to a broader audience. This project adroitly links research, community engagement and storytelling into a consumable and highly engaging tourism package.

AILA National Award for Tourism

The Gap and Natural Bridge

Department of Parks and Wildlife

This extraordinary project elevates the Gap and Natural Bridge tourist sites to international significance. The design delicately responds to the sensitive site while seamlessly connecting with its surrounding landscape setting. The Department of Parks and Wildlife’s clear understanding of site, including how people might better interact with it, and the planning and design solution adopted to manage and control the visitor experience, is exemplary in its execution.

The hard landscape forms, clever use of material and attention to detail soften the engineering robustness of this project, making the walkway structure feel as if it is draped across the rock surface. The lookout is spectacular, the projecting ramp testing the resolve of visitors wanting to experience the drama of the seascape below and beyond.

Urban Design

AILA National Urban Design Award of Excellence

Parramatta City River Strategy

McGregor Coxall

Great landscape architecture often involves embracing elements of the natural environment to drive forward design thinking. When applied in an urban design situation, opportunities arise to change the focus of a city. The Parramatta City River Strategy is such a project. It sets out to rediscover the natural aesthetic of the river and, in doing so, to recalibrate the economy of Sydney’s second CBD. It’s a bold project that seeks to draw from the community, to inform decision makers and leaders and to provide a forward vision for Parramatta. It pulls together transport frameworks, recreational corridors and multi-use architectural spaces, balancing infrastructure with aesthetic outcomes. At the same time, Aboriginal and colonial heritage is recognised and provided for through a collaborative delivery and implementation plan. As summed up by the Lord Mayor, it is “a plan for a world class river foreshore that recognises the importance of the river to the city, improving the city’s connections while protecting and activating the river for people to enjoy”.

AILA National Award for Urban Design

Victoria Square, Tarntanyangga Urban Regeneration Project

Taylor Cullity Lethlean

Photo: John Gollings

Victoria Square Tarntayangga is an urban regeneration project with a bold vision to create a focussed heart of the city. With a brief strong on future proofing and flexibility of space, the project team has had to be creative in their interpretation of community needs. The resulting project facilitates everyday community expression, supporting a wide variety of festivals and community events. From intimate seating for a quick business lunch to large open spaces that accommodate concerts, the design is adaptable, moveable, temporary and permanent all at the same time. It provides a new hub for the city that can only benefit small local businesses, and it embraces its Aboriginal and cultural heritage to provide for recognition and reconciliation. It’s a space for a dynamic city that embraces people of all ages and walks of life to commune, celebrate and reconnect with each other.

AILA National Award for Urban Design

Elizabeth Quay

ARM Architecture and Taylor Cullity Lethlean

Photo: Peter Bennetts

In a bold gesture celebrating art, design and just pure fun, Elizabeth Quay is fantasy made reality. In the heart of Perth’s waterfront, the project reconnects the city with the Swan River in a way that promotes exuberant public participation and engagement. The project is landscape theatre, combining natural elements such as water and trees with dazzling lighting and sculptural architecture. At the same time, it provides for new mixed-use activity, ensuring that waterfront activities are enriched by supporting built form and an activated ground plane. Integral to the design is recognition of its place, through use of botanically correct planting and opportunities for public artwork. Stormwater is effectively managed to provide irrigation and environmental outcomes. Clearly design-lead, the project brings out the best in landscape driven urban design.

Research, Policy and Communication

AILA National Research, Policy and Communication Award of Excellence

Urban Forest Strategy and Precinct Plans

City of Melbourne

The Urban Forest Strategy and Precinct Plans are tremendous examples of public policy. Melbourne’s rapidly aging and declining tree cover, urban densification and divergent public views, prompted a strategic approach to create lasting and impactful changes. The Urban Forest Strategy and Urban Forest Precinct Plans exemplify transformational policy and active citizen engagement as well as establishing best practice for the creation, management and enhancement of urban forests.

This project marks a significant change in the way the urban forests are considered, procured, and managed in the city. The Melbourne City Council aims to increase publicly owned tree cover from 22 percent to 40 percent by 2040, requiring three thousand trees planted per annum to meet these targets. While establishing and providing a means to achieve these targets is commendable, this project goes well beyond rhetoric into citizen co-design and continual citizen involvement. Ongoing connection with the policy and planning is encouraged – each of the sixty thousand trees in the City of Melbourne has a unique ID number linked to an online map that allows citizens to email the tree and receive a reply. This kind of interaction has generated unprecedented support through the further development of plans and programs that empower the community to make decisions about their own streets.

The Urban Forest Strategy and Precinct Plans ensure a legacy for current and future generations by planting urban forests that are adaptable and complex ecologies. Each of the now ten completed precinct plans create diverse, robust, and resilient urban forests that will sustain Melbourne in the face of climate change, urban densification and the compounding effects of urban heatislands. By demonstrating the essential social, economic and environmental services that trees provide, the strategy clearly articulates the how policy can engage its citizenry and work towards more sustainable cities.

AILA National Award for Research, Policy and Communication

Sydney Green Grid

NSW Government Architect’s Office

The Sydney GreenGrid Project establishes a framework to create an interconnected network of open space throughout metropolitan Sydney. This network includes an extensive range of open spaces: from national, regional and local parks, through the harbour, wetlands, rivers, beaches and creeks to playgrounds, playing fields, golf courses and cemeteries. Further linkages are fostered within the wider public realm through enhancing creek corridors, transport routes, footpaths andcycleways.

The jury commends the project’s rigorous research approach and methodology, extensive documentation and inventory of existing open space networks and its identification of strategic opportunities to create high calibre green infrastructures across the greater Sydney region. The Sydney Green Grid evolves policy frameworks into action plans. It moves beyond aspirations for ‘greening up’ cities into thoroughly embedded and thriving urban ecological systems.

AILA National Award for Research, Policy and Communication

Urban Green Cover in NSW Technical Guidelines

NSW Government Architects’ Office

The NSW Technical Guidelines for Urban Green Cover provides practical information for local government and built environment professions to plan, procure and implement vegetated and reflective roofs, green walls, street plantings, permeable and reflective road surfaces.

The Jury commends this project for its legible, comprehensive approach to the implementation of urban green cover. The document highlights extensive research conducted by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage that validates the relationship between increasing vegetation cover and lowering surface temperatures. The guidelines also include innovative technical specifications, detailed construction information, and cost effective approaches that enhance appropriate design solutions and provide demonstrable results for the mitigation of urban heat island effect.

AILA National Award for Research, Policy and Communication

The Adelaide Design Manual

Design + Strategy, Adelaide City Council

The Adelaide Design Manual is an interactive toolkit for guiding the implementation of best practice design standards for the City of Adelaide’s streets, public spaces and Park Lands. The Jury commends the live and flexible component of these innovative design standards. The online format provides an approachable and interactive design toolkit while allowing for continual information renewal and document updates to occur in real time. The provision of case studies, guiding documentation and technical specification further enhances the depth of the manual. The highly visual and well-considered linkages across the web platform allow for ease of use and extend the range of users who can engage with the materials. The manual is a rigorous and comprehensive set of design guidelines which has a multi-layered approach to a wide variety of audiences.

Communities

AILA National Communities Award of Excellence

Afghan Bazaar Cultural Precinct

HASSELL and Sinatra Murphy

Photo: Andrew Lloyd

The Afghan Bazaar Cultural Precinct celebrates the concentration of Afghan businesses in Thomas Street, Dandenong, Victoria. The Jury highly commends this project for its multivalent approach to community engagement, its exploration and recognition of the diverse Afghan communities in Dandenong, as well as deep collaborations between artists, landscape architects, community members, traders, and local government. The project moves beyond the often literal clichés of ethnic branding and explores multicultural notions of place and space in our public streetscape environments. The stakeholder consultation revealed discontent with previous attempts at placemaking and contentious symbolic gestures. The landscape architects focused on providing a variety of means to bring people together through acknowledging specific cultural differences and spatial use patterns. The design for the Afghan Bazaar Cultural Precinct provides richly layered spaces for social interaction within diverse, specific cultural norms while accommodating shared festivals such as Nowruz (Persian New Year), reinterpretations of culture, and daily life in the precinct.

AILA National Award for Communities

The Green Space Strategy

John Mongard, Gavin Hardy, Alvin Kirby and Michelle Kirby-Brown

The Kurilpa peninsula includes the suburbs of West End, Highgate Hill and South Brisbane. As is often the case in areas of rapid urbanisation and densification in Australia, the peninsula’s population is projected to increase remarkably with the vast majority of new residents comprising of apartment dwellers without private gardens. The Green Space Strategy is a result of a number of community forums and pro bono work between local landscape architects and three community groups.

The Jury commends the project team for their insight and leadership in working with local communities for over 20 years of sustained effort. The landscape architects have constructed a live document which explores thirteen types of green urban spaces and reconsiders 11 hectares of underutilised publicly owned land. While the Green Space Strategy is specific to the Kurilpa peninsula, it is an excellent model for local action and collaborative planning approaches that could be employed widely across Australia.

AILA National Award for Communities

Get Sunflowered

OUTR Research Lab, RMIT University

Get Sunflowered is the transformation of redundant spaces in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria, through a series of temporal community events that included cleaning, planting, weeding, watering and eventually a ‘harvesting’ party with local live music, food, and entertainment. This project activates underutilised spaces while cultivating community conviviality. The Jury commends this project for its approach in a regional centre where population and economic shifts have resulted in the necessity for novel approaches to disused spaces. The temporal activation of these spaces and their unique transformation under a blanket of sunflowers, assists in providing alternative future visions.

Gardens

AILA National Gardens Award of Excellence

Forest Edge Garden

Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture

Photo: Dianna Snape

Design restraint is an important tool in the landscape architecture profession, and Forest Edge uses this tool to perfection. The approach has been to bring together the site’s geology, flora and aspect, along with the transitional patterns of fire and drought, to deliver a garden that draws its aesthetic appeal from the landscape in which it sits. The design focuses on resilience, from careful species selection to careful water management regimes.

Forest Edge maintains all the usual elements of a residential garden, but it delivers these in a way that brings long-term appreciation of the wider landscape and a desire to manage and protect its delicate ecological attributes.

AILA National Award for Gardens

Garangula Gallery

Tract Consultants

The design brief for Garangula Gallery was pretty simple – incorporate a gallery for Aboriginal Art into an expansive landscape. Achieving this involved balance, harmony and architectural artistry. The result is a garden that focuses the view on selected sculptural pieces, while providing others with a big-sky backdrop. In its own right the garden portrays elegance and understated sophistication. While the sculptures undoubtedly provide the focal attention, the planting design is bold and deliberate, anchoring the gallery building into its setting.

AILA National Award for Gardens

North Shore Estate

CALDESIGN

Peter Brennan Photography

It's easy to become overwhelmed by a blank canvas and a client whose vision is only to create something welcoming. In such situations, the role of the landscape architect is to show restraint, and carefully pull all of the desirable features into a cohesive whole. This North Shore garden achieves this. Using heritage-listed Oak trees as a starting point, the design seeks to evoke a sense of relaxed formality that expresses a sense of balance and unity. At the same time, repurposing the old swimming pool allows for the capturing of precious rainwater, while various rooms in the garden provide varying experiences. All this is beautifully executed with a careful selection of materials and plant species.

International

AILA International Award of Excellence

Nanjing Tangshan Geopark Museum

HASSELL

Photo: Johnson Lin

In this new category, the Jury identified the Tangshan Relics Park as a standout project of international significance. The site is an ancient quarry, where significant human relics were discovered in 1993 within the Paleozoic era geologic formations. The project is an experiential and immersive gateway and forecourt for the new Nanjing Tangshan Geopark Museum, designed by architect Studio Odile Decq.

The gateway plaza and surrounding parkland connections define the public domain of the site, creating a ‘geopark’ and a major new international tourist destination for Nanjing. Sweeping forms reveal the geology and reinforce the site’s history and contemporary interpretation, while the design includes direct references to characteristics of the Paleozoic era, from the rocky microbes of the Cambrian landscape through to the Carboniferous swamp forests, embedded with carvings depicting the evolution of prehistoric life.

The project successfully integrates the often-competing needs of environmental responsibility and creating sustainable tourism, and the landscape architects are to be congratulated on the impressive outcome.

AILA International Award

Surabaya Urban Corridor Development Program

Hansen Partnership

The Surabaya Urban Corridor Development Program provides comprehensive analysis for an urban corridor in a new light rail/tram corridor passing through the central city centre. It focuses on building local capability and capacity in urban design thinking and leadership, coupled with community-led ‘on the ground’ workshops and meetings with local officials and design professionals.The project was an opportunity for knowledge exchange on sustainability, densification, heritage, economic development and connectivity that helps ensure the successful development of the next stage of the project.

Communicating often complex and sophisticated ideas and solutions in a non-English speaking nation, with respect for the local customs and approaches, creates an intellectual exchange worthy of recognition. In this case, Australian landscape architects demonstrated contemporary, ‘best practice’ approaches to integrated transport and urban design. The result was a collaborative union between the Indonesian officials and Australian and Singaporean design teams that provides an outstanding model for similar future projects.